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Tutankhamun – the secrets of the tomb go online

17.07.10

From the disc-shaped main hall of the Sackler Library in Oxford, an unassuming passageway leads to a staircase that takes you down below street level. Through a door conspicuous "archive", office ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights watch down on a cheap blue carpet and a row of grey rolling stacks.

The hum of the air-conditioning lets twig that this ordinary-looking room is hiding something special. The temperature is held at 18.5C (65F), several degrees cooler than the joyous July day outside, while a humidifier keeps the moisture equal tightly controlled. For those grey stacks contain the forgotten secrets of the most distinguished find in Egyptology, if not all of archaeological history: the tomb of Tutankhamun .

This is the Griffith Initiate – arguably the best Egyptology library in the humanity. One of its most prized collections incorporates the notes, photographs and diaries of the English archaeologist Howard Carter, who discovered Tutankhamun's resting role in 1922. The only intact pharaoh's tomb ever discovered, it contained such an array of treasures that it took Carter 10 years to catalogue them all. Yet regardless of the immense significance of the discovery, the majority of Carter's findings have never been published, and many questions adjoining the tomb remain unanswered.

Jaromir Malek is the silken-spoken keeper of the archive whose own Tutankhamun project is nearing finalization. By making all of Carter's notes available online, Malek wanted to make safe that the public would have access to the full extent of the discovery – and to spur Egyptologists into finishing the job of studying the grave's contents. He has ended up creating a model that other researchers ambition will transform the field of archaeology .

Source: The Guardian